AMD Realigns Organization & Names COO

AMD announced the appointment of Lisa Su as the company's COO, a position that has remained vacant under the new management, and has realigned the organizational structure to report to the COO.

AMD announced the appointment of Lisa Su as the company’s COO, a position that has remained vacant under the new management, and has realigned the organizational structure to report to the COO. In the company’s continued evolution, AMD announced additional changes to it organizational structure. In the initial reorganization under CEO Rory Read, AMD organized into individual business groups focused on client (PC), graphics, server, embedded applications, and semi-custom designs. Each group had its own engineering resources and, with the exception of the semi-custom group, all groups shared sales and operations resources.

Lisa Su, AMD

Under the revised organizational structure, the five business units will report into two groups under the COO, and each group will have its own dedicated sales and operational resources. The new computing and graphics business group includes AMD’s client, consumer graphics, and professional graphics business units. The enterprise, embedded, and semi-custom business group includes AMD’s server, dense server, embedded, and semi-custom business units.

In terms of engineering, there are no changes to the organization. AMD’s CTO Mark Papermaster’s organization will maintain responsibility for developing and acquiring intellectual property used in all AMD products, and the product engineering teams in each business unit will be responsible for the individual product designs.

With her new responsibilities and role as COO, Lisa Su continues to be the rising star at AMD. In addition, John Byrne, formerly the CSO, is in now in charge of the computing and graphics business unit. While John Byrne no longer reports directly to CEO Rory Reed, he now has operational responsibility for AMD’s largest product lines. No appointment was made for the lead of the enterprise, embedded, and semi-custom business group. As a result, Lisa Su will be the interim lead until an appointment is made.

With the exception of Andrew Feldman, all other business unit general managers will remain the same. No one else has left the company. According to AMD and Mr. Feldman, his departure is unrelated to the reorganization and was a transition that had been planned for some time.

While the reorganization itself is not a major change, it realigns some of the support resources for the business units. However, the selection of the lead for the enterprise, embedded, and semi-custom business group is critical, because this group is expected to drive most of the company’s future revenue growth. As a result, AMD will need someone with a strategic approach and skilled at working with a broad range of customers.

When a company is acquired, it is common to have the existing management sign a one to two-year contract as part of the buyout agreement. After that agreement expires, it is common to see the founders leave the company with their full bonus and payout rather than stay for a reduced salary. So, I wouldn't read too much into Mr. Feldman's departure.

There seems to be more to Andrew Feldman's departure. He would have been the logical choice to head the dense-server BU. It appears they don't have anyone in that position and Lisa is handling it herself?

The sea-micro acquisition always seemed perplexing. AMD has been a server cpu company and for it to be selling systems has always been odd. This might mark the end of that experiment.